“Kill! kill time!--Oh, dear! no,” replied Archibald; “you know nothing about the matter. Time travels too fast by half to please me;--I should like to clip the old scoundrel's pinions. The complaints which 1 have heard, occasionally, of time passing away so slowly, _ennui_, and what not, are to me miraculous. Time seems to travel at such a deuce of a rate, that there's no keeping pace with him. The days are too short by half so are the nights; so are the weeks, the months, and the years. I can scarcely get to bed before it's time to get up; and I haven't been up but a little time, apparently, before it's time to go to bed. I can but barely peep at the Gazette, or any matter of similar interest in the papers, and swallow an anchovy-sandwich, and a couple of cups of coffee, when it's time to be at the'counting-house. By the time I have read the letters and given a few directions, it's time to be in a hundred places;--before 1 can reach the last of, them, it's time to be on 'Change;--I don't speak to half the people there, to whom I have something to say, before it's time to reply to correspondents; and my letters are scarcely written before it's post and dinner time. Farewell business!--but then there's no time for enjoyment: dinner, wine, coffee, supper, and punch, follow in such rapid succession,--actually treading on each other's heels,--that there's no time to be comfortable at either of them. It's the same in bed;--a man must sleep fast, or time will get the start of him, and business be behind-hand an hour or two, and everything in disorder next morning.--If I accept a bill for a couple of months, it's due before I can well whistle: my warehouse rents are enormous; and, upon my conscience, Lady-day and her three sisters introduce themselves to my notice, at intervals so barely perceptible, that the skirt of one of the old harridans' garments has scarcely disappeared, before in flounces another. It's just as bad with the fire-insurances, and a thousand other things,--little matters as well as great: a man can scarcely pick his teeth before he's hungry again. The seasons are drawn by race-horses; my family has barely settled at home after a trip to Buxton, Brussels, or elsewhere, before summer comes round, and Mrs. H. pines for fresh air and an excursion checque again. I can scarcely recover the drain made on my current capital, by portioning one daughter, before another shoots up from a child to a woman; and Jack This or Tom T'other's father wants to know if I mean to give her the same as her sister. It's wonderful how a man gets through so much in the short space of life; he must be prepared for everything, when, egad! there's no time for anything.” “Can this really be the fact?” inquired Reginald, incredulously. “I give you my word and honour it is.” “But,” said Sir Waldron, “you have actually complained to me, this morning, how the past week has 'dragged its slow length along' with you.”